The Silver Lining
by Renatus
Summary: What do you suppose it would be like, to have a constant companion, all to yourself, all yours? Would it make you more daring when you have a fellow conspirator, more content with an always friend, more cruel with another to justify your cruelness, or more true to yourself with your soul always there to speak from your heart? HPxHDM
1. Names

**Author's Note:** What do you suppose it would be like, to have a constant companion, all to yourself, all yours? Another being who is your other half, your soul, yourself. I wonder if it would make you more daring when you have a fellow conspirator, more content with an always friend, more cruel with another to justify your cruelness, or more true to yourself with your soul always there to speak from your heart.

**Warnings:** This is written in a prompt-response format following a list of themed words. Will be posted in a chronological order. A side-project that is wholly exploratory and not plotted much at all.

**The Silver Lining  
**Harry Potter X His Dark Materials

**01 Names**

When Harry Potter is born, his mother names him for his father, James. James gives him the name Harry, "because of that scruff on his head!" A reason for which Lily swats him, but James is unrepentant and their son is thus named.

It is Lily's daemon Ffionn who names the new child's daemon. It is a puffy little chick of some indeterminate breed and clings tightly to the newborn's ear with its little clawed feet. It is terribly small, small enough to curl up in the hollow of the boy's ear and its feathers are nothing but a dull grey fuzz. The daemon's eyes are sealed shut and it peeps weakly every time Harry shifts beneath its grasp.

"Neelofar," Ffionn says in her light voice. "For the waterlily, for you, Lils. He ought to be named for you, too."

Lily smiles at her little son and trails her fingers over his fuzzy head. Harry merely snuggles deeper into her chest, his arms and legs curled up beneath his body. "So his daemon will carry my name?"

"I like it," James pipes up from his spot curled around his wife. He is slumped rather bonelessly, his long legs dangling off the bed with one arm pinned beneath his wife's body and the other holding onto his son's foot as if he can't quite let him go. James' eyes are closed and he's taking up more of the pile of pillows on the bed than Lily is, but Lily, despite the birthing, is wide awake and awed by the precious bundle in her arms. James' Heortwiella is already asleep, the red deer curled across her human's feet with her forelegs hanging off the edge of the bed.

"So he knows he's yours, too," Ffionn says, propping her forelegs up on the bed so she can press her nose ever-so-lightly to the tiny chick's. It peeps at the contact and the sound is so bird-like that they can't even be sure of the daemon's gender. And they are only unsure because of Lily and Ffionn, and that they are both female and that is awfully rare.

"So he'll know that he is loved," Lily says.

ooo

Harry, nor his daemon, would remember the name given to the little chick and it would be many years before someone bothered to tell him of the name bestowed with so much care upon them.

ooo

Harry doesn't know that it isn't normal until his first day at Primary School.

He is five and Dudley is only thirty-eight days older but that's enough for Dudley Dursley to announce that he's the boss as soon as Aunt Petunia leaves them on the little enclosed playground of the school. Dudley's daemon Petal is a little pug with white and brown fur and she scowls at Harry's daemon, who hasn't moved from his shirt since Petunia rapped on the cupboard door that morning. She's a tiny little brown spider, and while Petal probably only knows that she always hides in Harry's shirt, Harry can feel her eight tiny feet tickling the skin over his chest.

"Don't you ferget, freak boy," Dudley says to him, pointy a pudgy finger at him in a weak imitation of the way Aunt Petunia had waved her finger at Harry just moments ago. Harry isn't impressed by his cousin, though, because Uncle Vernon is at least five of Dudley and a lot more scary to boot. So Harry just gives his cousin a flat look and bounds away from him towards the colorful conglomerate of playground equipment. Its plastic and bright and new and Harry has never been down a slide before and he's dying to try it.

There's a line of three other kids waiting for their turn on the yellow slide, and one of them is already hanging off the railings on either side of the ladder that takes them up to the top. He's a blonde-haired kid with big eyes and he's leaning way backwards in order to talk to the pig-tailed girl behind him. She's scowling at him, and he's grinning, and their daemons are already wrestling with each either in a tangle of fur clad bodies. Harry thinks one of them is a cat.

He sidles up to the third kid, a pudgy boy, but not nearly as pudgy as Dudley. He's watching the other two snipe at each other from a safe distance while still being in line. Harry peers around his shoulder at the two arguing in time to hear the blonde boy call the girl a pansy and the girl to take a swipe at him. She misses because the blonde leans back into the ladder of the slide and suddenly sprints up it. His daemon follows him in the form of some long-bodied thing that looks like a cross between a cat and Dudley's hamster that didn't last the month.

"What's going on?" Harry asked quietly.

The boy in front of him jumps and squeaks, but Harry isn't sure if that was the boy or his daemon who is a hamster that looks remarkably like the one that didn't survive Dudley and Petal. She's peaking out from the boy's collar with a wide-eyed twitching look.

"Oh," the boy says, as if calming from a particularly bad scare. "That's Piers," he says, pointing at the blonde boy who is perched atop the yellow slide and is still taunting the girl, "and Bethany."

The boy looks at him askance. "Do you now Piers?"

Harry shakes his head and smiles, which seems to settle the boy a lot.

"Hullo, I'm Nigel," he says.

"Harry."

"Hi!" Nigel repeats, then glances at the hamster in his shirt. "This is Pika."

Harry blinks at the little hamster as she looks all over his person for his own daemon. Nigel does this too, even going so far as to look all around him on the ground for Harry's missing partner. She finally crawls slowly out of his shirt, one little leg at a time in a snail's pace. Nigel's Pika sees her first and exclaims as the little spider comes into view. She changes for them, into the shape of a little mouse and perches on Harry's shoulder, clinging to the collar of his big t-shirt as if ready to dash back into hiding.

"Hi," she says, very quietly.

Nigel beams and Harry is sure that Pika does too. It's Pika who asks the question. "What's your name?"

Harry and his daemon don't have an answer for them, though. Harry's daemon has never had a name, not like Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia and their special son, Dudley. Their daemons have always had names. Harry has never known his daemon to have a name of her own and hadn't thought it was strange, before. Harry hadn't known his own name until he was like three, or four maybe. It wasn't all so long ago really...

But as Nigel and Pika continue to stare at him, Harry finally figures out that it isn't normal. He can tell by the way Nigel and Pika are looking at them. His daemon ought to have a name.

Harry is saved by Dudley and its one of those situations that isn't really any better, but it is a familiar problem. Dudley's grip on his shoulder is hard and the bigger boy is able to push him to the ground without much effort. The suddenness of it causes Harry's daemon to loose her grip and tumble across the sand and Petal strikes quickly, shifting from pug to fat cat and snatching her up in her jaws. She squeals in protest of the handling and Harry cries out, feeling the uncomfortable pressure of the grip Petal has on his daemon.

"No, Petal!" Harry calls as the cat scampers out of his reach, scurrying behind Dudley's feet. "Let her go!"

Harry's daemon writhes, despite the discomfort and Petal tightens her hold, using her claws now too and Harry clenches his teeth against the pain that he feels through their connection. The blonde boy from the slide sidles up next to Dudley, and Harry finds both of the looking down at him in perverse joy. But the discomfort through his bond to his daemon distracts Harry from their taunts.

"Oh, leave him be!" Bethany says, but she doesn't move from her position halfway up the ladder of the slide, as if she's reluctant to give up her position - either as the next in line or for the safety the height gives her.

Finally, Harry's daemon has enough and changes shape, shifting from tiny little mouse into a bear cub and takes a heavy swipe at Petal's house cat face. Petal drops her, more from surprise than pain, and Harry's daemon scrabbles wildly in the sand to return to him, her rotund shape slowing her.

Dudley screams from the hit, a high-pitched wail of a cry that brings the teachers down on them in an instant and Harry is hauled to his feet for a scolding about keeping his clothing clean while his daemon simultaneously gets a scolding from the teacher's daemon about etiquette. His teacher's daemon is a long-legged bird with an equally long neck and beak and she barks out harsh instructions to the sullen bear cub even as Harry weathers the scolding from the woman gripping his shoulder.

Dudley nurses his face and snuggles his daemon, who is a little pug pup once again, both of them sniffling dramatically. Harry nurses the bruised feeling he has in his ribs and the actual bruises that his daemon has from Petal's harsh bite on her.

He keeps silent throughout the entire thing, nodding only to appease the teacher's need for a response. He does not speak again for the rest of the day and his daemon disappears into his hair as a black spider the moment Aunt Petunia shows up at the gates to escort them back home.

Dudley tells the woman everything about his day, his false stories structured to make him look clever and good and wonderful and Harry as anything but. Harry ignores the glower his Aunt gives him when Dudley tells her about the incident on the playground and how Harry's daemon attacked Petal when Harry wanted to take over the slide from all the rest of the schoolyard children and how Dudley tried to stop him and save them all from his freakishness -

Harry is locked away into his cupboard with no dinner as soon as they get home.

ooo

There's a dictionary in his cupboard, a big book with only little black and white pictures that Dudley announced to be boring and so Harry had inherited it. Harry flips through it randomly, letting the large pages flap and turn as gravity would catch them. His daemon stops them by suddenly scampering out of his shirt and into the book, her little mouse body getting lost in the big pages of the book. Harry pulls the pages apart to find her again, and she's perched atop the book in the form of some long-legged mouse that looks almost like a rabbit, but with a longer tail and a lot smaller of a body. She's different from the form she had hiding in his shirt and he takes a moment to study it. She is golden haired, with long round ears, a mouse's face and little front arms but with a rabbit's rear legs and a long tale that sports a tuft of hair at its end.

"A fawn hopping mouse," she tells him. "I saw it on the telly once."

"Don't let Dudley or Petal hear you say that," Harry tells her. "Vernon'll nail a black curtain over the slats." Harry points to the small window in the cupboard door that is guarded by narrow horizontal slats. They let in a little air and less light, but they are enough for them to peer out into the house. From opposite angles he can see into both the living room and through the doorway into the kitchen. He'd hate to have them covered up if Uncle Vernon knew he could see the telly in the living room from his cupboard.

"Of course!" She hops once on the page, her long rear legs flopping against the paper. "Oh, look!" She points to an entry of the dictionary. The book had stopped and opened in the B's. She is pointing to one particular word, and there, sitting between 'bicarbonate of soda' and 'bicentenary' is the word 'bice.'

"I like this one," she says and Harry reads through the definition, happily skipping the parts of the dictionary entry that he didn't fully understand to read the parts that he did.

"Of the color of mal- malachite. Blue. Green. Or of a green hue," he reads.

"I like this one," his daemon says again, with a nod of her little head. And suddenly she's a little bird with a long, needle beak and brightly colored feathers in a kaleidoscope of greens and blues.

She nods again, her long beak emphasizing the motion in an almost hilarious way and she flies up with an audible buzz to flit around his head, her wings going so fast that they are a blur.

"Bice?" he asks. She gives a happy sound that settles between a chirp and a weeeee and continues to buzz around him. "Ok," he says, and shrugs. "I like it too, Bice."

Harry smiles as he watches her circle and call out happy little cheeps and finally, his Daemon has a name of her own.

ooo

"Do you think mum gave you a name, before, like every other kids' mums?"

"Maybe so. I think so. Yes."

...

"What do you think it was?"

"Something beautiful."


	2. Wounded

**The Silver Lining**

Harry Potter X His Dark Materials

02 Wounded

Petunia's mother had always wanted a slew of girls. Petunia remembers her saying so, smiling bright and cheery as she caresses the wide girth of her belly where Petunia's new sister grows. Petunia already knows that she'll love her, and their mother has already given her a name: Lily. Her mother wants to name all her girls after flowers, "So all my flowers will be together like a beautiful garden!"

"Like the secret garden?" Petunia asks.

"Just like!"

Petunia and Neldan are five when their little sister Lily is born and six when their mother dies though its not even a full month between the two. Petunia remembers seeing her mother's daemon fade, like a mirage being blown away on the wind, form and color turning to sand and dust and disappearing before her eyes. She can't really remember her mother's face in death, but she remembers holding the infant Lily and she remembers Neldan giving Lily's tiny little daemon a name: Ffionn, because their mother's deamon hadn't spoken since the birth to name the new daemon himself.

"I don't remember what it means," Neldan says of the name, "but mum read it to us, sometime, I think."

"You think mum would like it?" Petunia asks, looking down at the copper-topped infant curled across her lap. Lily's daemon is so small that Petunia doesn't even know where she is, but suspects she's hiding in Lily's hair. Lily is sleeping and that's good, because the entire little church is very quiet except for the preacher's words at the front, but Petunia isn't looking to the front because that's where mother is laying in the coffin and she doesn't want to see.

"Yes, I think so."

The funeral had been a quiet thing - Petunia remembers the quiet of it. The house that night is also quiet until it is broken by the sound of something heavy being knocked over and glass breaking and the angry, baritone curses of her father.

Petunia slips out of the nursery, leaving Lily asleep in the cradle. Neldan is a chipmunk clinging to the lacy collar of her nightgown and yawning widely. The hallway is dark and the only light is either from the small lamp behind her or the beam of light coming out of the kitchen down the hall. Her father is still cursing and stumbles out of the kitchen like a toppling sack of potatoes. He is lumbering and large in the dark hallway and even Blanid is walking oddly, flitting behind her human as if a strong and erratic gust keeps blowing her paws out from under her. It is strange and ominous and Petunia has never seen her father stumble around so.

Petunia feels the doorjamb against her back even as he comes toward her.

" -Tunia!"

Neldan's cry does not make it to her in time and Petunia is suddenly on the floor, her face stinging, her ears ringing, her eyes already leaking the tears that had not come at the funeral. Neldan is on the floor near her head, having been knocked from his perch.

It takes her long minutes to realize that she is sprawled across the nursery floor and why.

He had struck her.

She doesn't move and doesn't hear him say sorry nor does she see him flee down the hall, Blanid hot on his heels, to the master bedroom where he slams the door against the world for the following five days. She remains on the floor with her cheek cradled in her hand, Neldan tucked close to her belly in the shape of something little and furry and comforting like a cat or a puppy. She stays there until Lily stirs and cries and she gets up to tend to her.

ooo

Petunia would spend the following eleven years shielding her sister from their father's sporadic, drunken anger and then Lily would escape it all and leave Petunia behind. Alone.

She hated Lily for that.

ooo

Harry stumbles, his feet skidding on the wet concrete stoop and with a quick grab onto the railing that decorated the three narrow steps down to the yard saves himself from a tumble. Bice dashes out between his legs, paws kicking up dirt and water as the cat spins in the grass and hisses and spits back up at the door.

"That hurt," Bice says, and the daemon's voice is changed, not female but to that of a boy's voice, like what used to happen before Petunia made it clear that it is not normal for a boy's daemon to change its gender along with its shape. But ever since Bice took a name Harry's daemon has returned to the habit, sometimes girl, sometimes boy though usually only when alone where the Dursley's can not tell.

Petunia makes a strained sound in her throat at Bice's boy voice. Harry watches the figure in the doorway warily from behind his hair. His aunt still has the hot frying pan in one hand, grease dripping with a wet sizzle onto the tile before the front door. In her other hand is a crumpled envelope she hasn't let go of since Harry had handed it to her from the mail slot.

The door just slams shut, without a word from the willowy Petunia who had just tossed her nephew out of her house.

Harry straightens and gives the door a sour look. As he watches he hears the audible and distinctive sound of the bolt sliding home, locking him out for the day. Harry remains for another long minute, staring at the door with an inscrutable expression before he finally turns and skulks down the steps and across the yard to the drive. Bice trails after him, blood red fur a stark contrast against the green grass of the garden and making his fur stand out brilliantly in his simple house-cat shape.

It is raining, a stubborn heavy drizzle that is already soaking through his jumper and has plastered Bice's shaggy fur to his body. The sky is low and dark, despite the early hour and he suspects it plans on raining for the entirety of the cursed day.

As they reach the road, Harry stoops and picks Bice up, cradling his spindly, kitten-ish body against his chest. He is shaking in his arms, his little frail body trembling uncontrollably, either from anger or pain or cold he doesn't know because he can feel both filtering down through the link he has with him and his own emotions are too strong to distinguish Bice's from his with any accuracy.

Harry's hands are also shaking, though he's quite sure its from his anger and fear.

Harry carries him all the way to the little copse at the edge of the park, the same one that he's used to escape Dudley and his gang in so many times over the years. He creeps into the brush quietly and stands stock still just inside the border, listening to make sure no one has come to the little hide-a-away before him. Mostly he is listening for Dudley's boasting, loud voice. It's a habit. Dudley is back at the house at Number Four watching the telly. Rain drips down from his hair along the back of his neck and makes a long, cold trail into his jumper between his shoulder blades.

"Harry -"

Harry slips further into the copse at Bice's low voice and when he's at its dead center, under the bows of an old, low-slung pine that had been cut short by lightning some years ago, he finally stops. The needles on the ground are a good cushion and dry and the low branches sweep around them in a shadowy shelter that feels very much like the tree is hugging them in. Harry finally lets Bice go, laying his furry body in his lap. His hands come away stained with the red of his fur as if the rain has washed away the color.

But its his blood, not the color of his fur that is on his hands.

"Did you choose the red to hide it?" Harry asks him, his fingers carting gently through the shaggy cat fur to find the wounds. Bice twitches when he does, the tips of his fingers brushing lightly across the spatter of burns that mar his ribs, intermingled with a trio of scratches. They are angry and red, already seeping blood and the grease is matting his wet fur and its just a mess.

"To show that pan-throwing stick how angry I am," Bice growls out.

Harry does not call him on the lie. Instead he moves his fingers to his head, where he scratches behind Bice's ears and down the back of his jaw. Bice tilts his head into the touch and a faint purr can be felt through his body, vibrating through his legs. It stops just as quickly and Bice sighs.

"It hurts to purr," he says glumly.

Harry lets out a sound that is almost a laugh, but mostly an aborted sort of sob.

They are silent then, Harry's hand still gently petting Bice's head while he dozes. The thick pine over them blocks out most of the rain, and its as good a spot as any other to wait out the day.

The morning had begun quietly, which perhaps was the first omen. Petunia had rapped only once on his cupboard door and that without a shrill yell. Breakfast had progressed without major incident. Dudley had been wholly distracted by the new telly in the kitchen, and Vernon was hidden behind the dailies. Even Vernon's daemon, Pembe had lazed silently under his chair, not even bothering to take a swipe at Bice when he had gotten too close.

It was after the mail arrived that the morning degenerated, fast.

Harry has no idea what was in the letter that Petunia received. It had looked official, and was posted from County Surrey, but that was all Harry had bothered to read before he handed it over to his aunt.

The next thing he knew she was flinging the bacon pan around the kitchen, shrieking at him, flinging hot grease at Bice, arguing loudly with Vernon. It had been madness. Dudley cried, Petal whined, Pembe had scrambled blindly across the kitchen floor, striking out with her long claws as she reacted to the sudden flurry of activity. Harry's foot had been caught by the European mole's strike, toppling him against the counter. He had narrowly avoided the hot pan, fresh from the stove, but Bice had gotten a hail of hot grease splattered across him and he was distracted with dodging Neldan's excited and agitated dives. Pembe had gotten a swipe at Bice, too and unlike Neldan had connected. Amidst the chaos of human and daemon and breakfast Harry caught little information on the sudden and violent reaction of his aunt.

Then she had hauled him suddenly down the hall and straight out the front door, wounded and confused and endlessly wary of the madwoman. Bice changed along the way, from a white female bunny to a brilliantly red tom-cat, hissing in pain and anger and Harry's confusion.

"What set her off this time?" Harry asks.

"Something in the letter."

Harry knows this already. "Something about me?"

Bice tilts his head, thinking about it. Harry had certainly seen the brunt of her sudden and mysterious ire, though Vernon and even Dudley had certainly not been exempt from her scathing yells that morning. Harry had never known her to yell at her precious son before.

"I don't know," Bice says and turns his attention to the wounds dotting his flank. As a cat, it is easy for him to twist and begin to lick at them, cleaning away the grease and the blood from his red fur.

"Last time it was when we took the cat-shape," Harry says what they both know and try to forget. "The little lithe one."

Bice pauses his ministrations long enough to rake a rough tongue across the inside of his wrist. They remember Petunia's reaction very well. Petunia does not like cat forms on daemons, any cat shape. She also does not approve of a lot of other shapes, the unnatural ones or anything at all exotic. But cats are off-limits, too, even though they are normal. Petunia had shrieked at Dudley once for Petal taking on the shape of tabby to harass Bice, and Petal had taken dog shapes almost always since then.

"Maybe it doesn't matter," Bice says.

Harry says, "Maybe," but doesn't really believe it and Bice doesn't either.

ooo

"Do you think she'll let us back in today?"

"Do you want to be let in?"

...

"The library is open until ten."

"Let's go before it rains more."


	3. Running Away

**The Silver Lining**

Harry Potter X His Dark Materials

03 Running Away

Lily and Ffionn run away from home the summer of her seventh year. She packs her backpack with bananas and apples and her toothbrush and her teddie, Hazey, and her favorite sundress and the library book she's borrowed, a collection of Andersen's Fairy Tales. She is also sure to pack the tin of dominos that Petunia had given them for their birthday, and the pretty flowery scarf, even though it is summer and it is too hot to wear it. Her and Ffionn sneak down the hall and out the back door, though they probably didn't really need to sneak at all. Father wouldn't have heard them from his room down the hall and Petunia was in there with him -

Lily sprints across the backyard feeling like she's changing her life completely by slipping out the door without announcing herself to do so.

"Where, Lils? Where to?" Ffionn asks. She is a blonde colored pole cat today and Lily can feel her feet gripping at her blouse on her shoulder.

"Don't know," Lily breathes out and slides through the loose board at the back of the yard. They are through and out and suddenly free, dashing down the alley behind the row of soot-stained brick houses of Coalman's Road, of which her's is only one of many look-a-likes. Ffionn flows down her body even as she runs and leaps ahead of her, shifting in the air from pole cat to a copper terrier with long coltish legs that can keep up with Lily's. At the end the alley runs off into a wider street, Fireman's Lane and Lily follows the sidewalk all the way to the end and across the shallow, concrete rain-ditch and through the hedgerow to the park on the other side.

The park is taken up mostly by the futball field, but there is a rusted swing set with two seats along the edge. It is overhung by a towering tree and the grass is too long. Lily takes a rest here. Petunia has brought them here before, to push her on the swings after picking her up from Primary. Lily likes this place. There is a newer playground on the other end of Coalman's Road with a shiny new metal slide and a merry-go-round, but this one is quiet, old and the sisters always have it to themselves even when the secondary boys are on the field for their sport.

The swings are lonely without Petunia and Neldan, but Lily sits anyways.

"You OK, Lils?" Ffionn asks. She sits at Lily's feet and pokes her cold nose into the hole of Lily's jeans to her knee.

Lily nods but inspects the damage. Her arm is sore and as she pushes up the sleeves of her blouse she can already see the red-purple marks ringing her arm where father had gripped too hard in order to push her out of the room. Blanid had even gripped Ffionn in her sharp jaws, which was easy when Ffionn is a little polecat and Blanid is a full grown Bobcat. Petunia had slammed the door shut between them then, shutting Lily out from her sister and father. That's when Lily had packed and ran away.

"Yes," Lily says finally.

"Do you think -"

"Don't know, Ffee," Lily says, poking at the bruises on her arm. "We've never tried to make it happen."

"Do try," Ffionn urges, shifting and crawling up her leg as a red squirrel.

Lily tries, but she isn't sure what she's even trying to do. It's an almost thing, like a puzzle with missing pieces. They know there is something, something special that lets them heal the bruises, and mend the dropped eggs and silent their footsteps when its the middle of the night and they have to get up for the bathroom because they cannot wait any longer but father is cursing in the kitchen still and Petunia says to never make a sound or be seen when father is cursing.

Lily can feel it. A tingle of that something that starts like fluttering butterflies in her belly and travels down her arms raising goosebumps and ends with the bruises from her father's hands fading away into freckled pink skin beneath her fingers.

"Lils!"

Lily grins and her excitement is such that Ffionn reacts by shifting into a brilliantly colored bird of greens and blues and purples.

"That was it! That was it, Lils!"

Lily is just grinning, too widely to respond with words.

"You're a witch!"

It is the voice of a strange boy from the scrubby trees behind them that startles them completely out of their celebratory excitement. It is a voice they have not heard before, and it comes from a boy they have never met, and Lily is quite sure she has not seen him ever at Primary, because he does rather stand out, but any of that is erased very quickly as his words register in her mind.

"What did you call me?!"

ooo

It would not be the first time that Severus Snape's words got him into trouble with Lily Evans. It would also not be the last time that Lily Evans ran away, even though eventually, she would escape entirely to Severus' world.

ooo

Bice is female and a roadrunner today, which is a good choice as they need the speed. Harry ducks around a sharp turn, his too-big sneakers skidding across the dirt and forcing him to put down a hand for balance. The rock retaining wall to his right is coarse under his fingers, but gives him a solid purchase even has his shoes slide on the dry sand. Bice's quick, spindly legs and talons allows her to dig into the dirt and dash ahead of him. Her laughter is barely held in and nearly drowned out by the sound of the baying dogs behind them.

"Not funny," Harry grumbles as he regains his footing and sprints after her. Bice turns her bird head around as she continues to run and even if he couldn't feel her laughter, he can see it light up her dark eyes like a couple of glittering black gems. She has chosen a particularly colorful patterning on her feathers that he is sure is unusual for a natural roadrunner, but the dark grays and browns with the splash of brilliant emerald down her back is striking and Harry likes it.

His longer legs catch up to her, and they shoot out of the narrow alley to the park in tandem.

Harry lays low and sprints hard across the open space, Bice right by his side, her face alight with her laughter. Hot on their heals come the trio of bullies and their daemons, all dogs for the chase. Human and daemon both call after him in a loud riot of taunts and jeers, Dudley and his Petal loudest of all.

"Too fat, too slow," Bice comments with a chirping laugh.

Harry frowns at the roadrunner even as she turns her head up at him in a bird-grin. Her crest of feathers are brilliant green and they make her eyes light up brilliantly. "Less laughing, more running," he comments.

Bice lets out another laugh, but her feet never waver in their sprint across the open playground. Harry sees the hillock ahead of them that marks the edge of the playground and the beginning of the overgrown bit of scrub that almost resembles a forest. They will be able to lose their hunters in there, so long as they reach it before they are caught.

There is a chain-link fence on the other side of the hill, just before the trees, that will prove an obstacle, but Harry and Bice do not slow down, even as they crest the little hill and start down the other side.

Gravity pulls him faster and as the fence looms, Harry lets gravity take over. His body falls forward and he tucks himself into a roll, his chin tight to his chest. He rolls, skidding to the side and the bottom links of the fence catch on his too-large T-shirt as he slips right under the fence.

He is up and running again before he even comes to a stop.

Bice catches up to him as a hummingbird, her plumage a riot of greens and blues. She hovers next to his head, her wings a loud hum with the proximity, and he can clearly hear her still laughing.

The sound of something large crashing into the chain-link fence echoes into the dimly lit little forest, and Harry pauses long enough to shoot a glance back the way he had come.

Dudley and Petal had run full-on down the hillock and into the fence, clearly having tried the same maneuver that Harry had just performed. While Petal had managed to slip under the fence in her little pug form, Dudley had rolled to a snug stop as his wider girth caught firmly on the fence. Petal is dashing back and forth from her human to the short distance she is able to go before waddling back again, kicking up dirt in her aggravation.

They have managed to hold up Dudley's friends, Piers and whats-his-name and their daemons as well. All of them are clamoring at the tall fence in a cacophony of sound and call. One of their daemons had changed to the shape of a monkey, which its cawing from the top of the fence while her human fails his attempts to scale the chain-links.

Harry lets out a laugh, the scene far better than he could have hoped for. Bice's laughter continues after his own, even as they turn and make their way through the dense shrub and spindly trees of the park's little glen, leaving their hunters behind.

ooo

Harry does not stay in the little forest. He takes advantage of Dudley's gang's distraction with the fence to cut straight through the brush and out the other side. Bice follows, weaving in and around through his legs as he hoofs it down the street. She's returned to her roadrunner shape, with the fetching green stripe down her back.

"Are we going?" Bice asks, not pausing in her mad circling of him.

Harry frowns, stuffing his fists into the pockets of his too-large jeans.

"Harry, are we going?" Harry isn't sure if her voice carries hope or nervousness. Maybe both, because he's pretty sure that he's feeling both, in spades.

"It's a good time to go," Bice continues, dashing through his stride and scampering along the sidewalk. "Dudley will tell them we did something to him and Aunt Petunia will lock the door on us tonight."

Harry nods. It is a good time to go. It's still morning, though a hot one being in the middle of summer, and they have all day to put distance behind them. Aunt Petunia won't look for them until tomorrow morning. They have all day.

"Are we doing this?" Harry asks, his voice low and Bice has to dash near him in order to hear. She ducks around his legs, flapping her wings as he doesn't even pause in his hurried stride. "We don't have anyone to go to."

Bice does not respond except to change her shape, flowing up his pant leg as a ferret, her little claws catching on his jeans as he walks. She curls up around his neck and presses her face into the space just below his right ear.

"We have each other," Bice says, male again, and Harry finally pauses his fast walk. He stands still on the corner of the end of Magnolia Street. Far behind him is Magnolia Crescent and the park where they lost Dudley's gang. Through the housing lots and hedgerows behind the park lies Privet Drive and down the lane is Number Four, nestled alongside its look-a-like neighbors. Now he's standing where Magnolia Street runs into First Elm and to his right is the Primary school, and his usual destination along this route, and off to the left is the supermarket that Aunt Petunia favors. Harry can see the stone wall that circles the lot from where he's standing. He has stood on this spot many times, and has turned either direction just as often.

But never has he gone straight on.

Ahead the narrow Magnolia Street abandons its name and becomes a wider road, Whinging Road that cuts straight to the City Centre of Little Whinging, and the bus stops that can take him to anywhere in England he wants to go. They don't have to stay in the perfectly manicured Magnolia neighborhood with the Dursley's. He knows they wouldn't look for them. They have stood on that corner before, staring down the road to the City Centre, dreaming about what they would do the day they took that step out of Little Whinging - out of County Surrey - maybe out of England altogether.

Harry doesn't think that he will ever be able to do it - take that step away. Not alone.

"Bice?" Harry asks feebly.

He's silent for a long minute and all Harry hears is his steady breathing and the faint beating of his little heart. Bice shifts again, scampering down his body and leaping onto the pavement before him. His form shifts in that leap, changing from the lithe body of a ferret to a coppery colored Terrier dog. He stands so proud and ready, his whole body pointing the way as if he were leading them both onto a great adventure.

"Let's do it!"

Harry takes the step.

ooo

Harry does not board the bus.

They make it to the City Centre and the little brick-laid square with the sad little fountain in its center before Bice in his bounding Terrior shape runs straight into Neldan as the other daemon exits a shop door.

Bice yelps at the suddenness of the other daemon's presence, so unexpected to them both and Harry stares at the herring gull for a full minute before the shrill sound of his aunt's voice penetrates his mind.

"You!"

Harry jerks his head up to the angry face of his aunt staring down at him. From the corner of his eye he sees Bice scramble across the pavement and curl his body around his feet, staring at the gull with a rather wide-eyed look despite his near inaudible growl and snarl. Neldan is cawing at them both, his voice sharp and about as shrill as Petunia's.

"What are you doing here?" she demands.

Harry gives an aborted shake of his head then forces himself to speak. "Just walking Aun-"

"Walking!" She responds, "Just walking! All the way out here!?"

Harry is not sure where else he should be walking. Petunia has never cared to know what he does with himself after she tosses him out for the day and as far as she may know he walks himself all the way to London and back by the time she deigns to let him in to cook supper for her or clean up after it.

Neldan flaps his wings harshly, pulling away from the ground and settles himself atop Aunt Petunia's shoulder. She doesn't really look at him, but they are both staring down at Harry and his daemon too much to bother with each other.

"Trouble, he is," Neldan caws into her ear.

"You're up to no good," Aunt Petunia states, looking down her long thin nose at him.

"No, we're -"

"Walking!" Neldan says as if it is some delinquent hobby.

"Don't bother!" Petunia cuts him off.

"Always, trouble," Neldan says.

Petunia purses her lips in such a way that they nearly disappear and Neldan's golden eyes are cold in their gleam.

"Trouble ma'am?" A deep voice interrupts their staring.

Harry whips his head around to see a police officer approach, his daemon a burly dog of some bull breed. He's eyeing the two of them with a sort of mix of concern and authority, but he's eyeing Harry especially, as if Harry is some street rat harassing a lady on the road. He probably looks like one. He's still covered in dirt from his maneuver with the fence in the park, and his clothes are three sizes too big and he has to tie his worn jeans onto his body with a bit of twine. His sneakers are the only things that fit him, and only because they were Dudley's two years ago and Dudley's feet haven't gotten much bigger than Harry's yet.

"No sir," Harry tells the officer, at the same time Petunia responds.

"He's up to something, I'm sure," his aunt tells the rather rotund officer. "But he is my nephew."

Harry's head whips back to her, shocked that she would claim him in any way whatsoever and he can see the moue of distaste that twists her features at the admission.

Harry gives up on defending his reputation. There's no point and he's too shocked at his aunt claiming relation to speak anyways. Bice hasn't said a word and as Petunia reaches out to grip Harry's shoulder he shifts and slithers up his pant leg in some serpentine shape. Neither Petunia nor Neldan must have seen, because Harry knows they would not approve of any sort of snake shape from him. Not at all.

"If you are sure, ma'am," the officer states, eyeing Harry again. Harry just keeps his eyes on the officer's daemon as it circles him, sniffing at his pant leg without touching him. Harry shifts away, uncomfortable with the big dog's proximity to Bice as he winds up his leg.

"Yes, officer," Petunia states. She gives the man something of a smile, but her fingers are digging into Harry's shoulder sharply. "I was just going on an errand, and he refuses to stay at home with my husband like a good boy ought."

Harry frowns. Petunia had all but thrown him out of the house that morning, as she had done almost every morning since the day she received the letter and flung the frying pan about the kitchen.

"Of course," the officer says. "Sorry to disturb."

Petunia offers the man a simpering sort of look that has Harry nearly gagging in response, but his aunt's grip only tightens. The officer bids them a short farewell, already turning his attention away and as soon as his dog daemon turns to follow Petunia is dragging Harry across the square towards her car. Harry doesn't fight her, feeling rather resigned about the whole ordeal. She tosses him into the backseat without a word and they drive out of the City Centre in stagnant silence.

It's as Bice makes his way to his shoulders that Harry realizes their route is not taking them back to Privet Drive. Rather, they were following a road that took them out of Little Whinging altogether.

"Where are we going?" Bice asks, her voice so low that Harry barely hears her. He looks to his shoulder and can barely see her either. Her hide has taken on the color of the greyed T-shirt he has on, and only her eyes are visible to him. He realizes that she's taken the form of some type of chameleon.

Harry shakes his head in response to her question. He doesn't know and with Aunt Petunia's face still set in displeased stone he is reluctant to ask for fear of drawing her displeasure upon him.

ooo

They don't drive terribly far. They are still in County Surrey, but have crossed a few village lines and both neared and skirted around London. The street signs tell Harry that they are in Cokesworth, which is a dreary little town full of neat rows of identical brick houses, darkened by so many layers of soot that some of the bricks are black and it drips down the side of the buildings like dark tears. Off in the distance a tall chimney looms over the rows of houses, silent and dark against the overcast sky. Petunia drives through it all with a distinct look of displeasure.

They pull into a parking slot near an important looking building of three stories, faced in sooty brick with half of its windows shuttered against the day light. Harry rather thought that the entire town looked abandoned and dead, as if all its people had up and left it behind to the low slung clouds and the darkened chimney that looked over it all.

"Get out," Petunia tells him shortly.

Harry obeys, scrambling out of the backseat to the sidewalk and watching his aunt warily as she rounds the car. She barely gives him a glance, a look that is shot down the length of her nose with squinted, displeased eyes. Harry does not give her any response and just trails after her.

She leaves him outside the great double doors of the building with a sharp-toned, "Don't move from this spot, you hear?"

Harry frowns after her and finally gives in to his impulse to stick his tongue out after the departing woman. With her inside and the doors already swinging shut, she does not see, though Neldan flaps his wings angrily back at them.

"I think he saw me," Harry murmurs.

"Who cares?" Bice says flippantly, scuttling out of his shirt to perch on his shoulder and stick her tongue out at the doors as well. In her chameleon shape, her gesture is far more dramatic than his own as her long tongue flicks out of her mouth at a distance that is nearly the full length of her body.

Harry settles down on the concrete steps leading up to the building and stares out at the dreary little village with its looming chimney and dark bricks. There is nobody on the road and its very quiet. A lone cricket plays from the overgrown grass somewhere off to the side of the building, and there's a call of a cuckoo off in the distance, but otherwise its very quiet and Harry can hear his own breathing loud in his ears and even the sounds of Aunt Petunia's car engine settling after the drive is clear in the quiet, hot noon sun.

"It's quiet," he says softly, almost whispering.

"It's empty," Bice responds.

She ventures off his shoulder, scuttling down his arm to poke at the warm concrete with a toe. She shifts as she leaves his hand to explore the steps. She changes from a little chameleon shape to a much larger lizard with a mottled brown and yellow body and horny protrusions all along her spine. A fin decorates her tail and her long, nailed toes scritch-scratch against the concrete.

"What's that shape?" Harry asks her.

"Sailfin lizard."

She's almost half a meter long from nose to tail, and Bice only ever takes such large forms when alone or when threatened by Petal and she can't hide in Harry's hair anymore. Her eyes are yellow and she looks rather fierce and exotic.

"I kind of like it," Harry comments as he watches her navigate the steps. Her body doesn't bend backwards as easily in this shape as it would if she were a cat or weasel, so she has to kind of side-slide down the concrete steps. Her nails scratch the stone a bit shrilly, but the sound doesn't bother either of them.

"It's not right," Bice says. "But it's nice."

As she speaks her hide shifts colors, the yellows into brilliant greens and the browns into a sort of rusty iron-grey. The spiny fins on the end of her tail are a bright green, too, and Harry rather thinks she looks like a flightless dragon.

"Pretty," Harry compliments and Bice continues to scrabble around the deep-set steps.

"Do you think crickets taste any good?" she asks and the cricket pauses its noise as if it had heard her.

Harry eyes the grass off to the side and makes a face. "Maybe only with chocolate."

Bice opens her mouth wide, slowly, her jaw working in slow strength for a moment before she snaps it shut suddenly. After a long minute the cricket starts up again and Bice heads in its direction. She makes her way down three more steps and then she's close to the clumps of grass and weeds that border the wide steps and stretch out in front of the building like a scraggly, neglected garden. She's at a fair distance now and Harry can feel the slight twinge of the stretch the distance causes them. She pauses on the edge of the grass, her head cocked back to look at him.

Harry does not move and Bice slowly crawls farther away, poking her nose into the grass and pulling their connection taught. It's rare that they feel comfortable enough to do this. It's rare that they are alone in a place that they feel safe enough to not be in very near proximity, but there is nobody here and Harry can't even hear anything coming out of the building behind him. Even the cuckoo has gone off out of hearing range, leaving them with only the lone cricket in the grass.

Bice continues her slow march into the grass and Harry sits out the stretch, shifting only once against the unfamiliar feeling. Its as if someone had tied a string to his diaphragm and had a hold of it, holding it taught but not pulling hard, just enough for Harry to feel the pressure pulling at him, pointing him in the direction his daemon is as if the the other end of the string is tied about her tail. Its not painful, it never has been, but it is different because they don't usually go far from each other and Harry is hyper-conscious about Bice's exact location to him.

Bice's tail is the only thing visible now, and it blends into the scraggy, sad-looking grass very well.

It's only because of the very quiet silence that Harry hears the man's footsteps at all. He walks very softly, and its barely a scuff of a sole against the first concrete step, six down from Harry's seat and on the opposite end of the wide set of stairs before the building. But the sound is loud in the quiet, and Harry's head whips around to stare at the sudden appearance of the man.

He's dressed darkly in black slacks and a sort-of faded, dingy grey button down that is closed tightly around his wrists and neck and a black vest hugs his chest. His dark hair is long and brushes his shoulders in heavy locks that mimics the sooty fall on all of the buildings. His eyes are just as dark and he stares at Harry as if shocked to see anybody living at all. Perhaps thats exactly so.

Harry stares back. There's something about the man that is strange. He's not sure if it's the cut of his slacks, or the number of many little buttons on his black vest, or how his slacks are thin and tucked into the tops of knee-high boots of shiny leather. Maybe its the belt that looks like it might be snake-skin, or the way his hair is almost oily and shines in the sunlight while his eyes are dark shadows and don't reflect any light at all. He is carrying a canvas bag in one hand and Harry can see leafy somethings peeking over its edge.

Harry feels rather exposed all of a sudden. He's perched halfway up the flight of steps, closed in by the concrete walls and iron rails that book-end them and the tall, brick-walled building behind him. He could jump over the rails and into the over grown yard, but the yard is enclosed by a high brick and iron fence that doesn't quite hide the neglected garden of grass, but is too high for Harry to jump and the vertical bars of the iron that tops the brick hedge would be too hard to climb.

Yet still the man is staring at him as if Harry were some sort of ghost come to haunt him.

The man takes one step up the stairs, his eyes boring into Harry and suddenly the doors behind him snap open. Harry jumps at the sudden sound and the following cawing voice of Neldan as Aunt Petunia exits the building in a flurry. She freezes, though, at the sight of the dark man standing on the bottom stair.

"Snape!"

Harry whips his head around to her and she is staring at the man in open shock, her eyes wide and her entire body strung stiff. Neldan is silent on her shoulder, his feathers a little ruffled as if he were about to take flight but then forgot to follow through.

At the sight of the gull, Harry suddenly realizes what was so off about the man. Harry looks back to him slowly, and eyes the man with some surprise. His daemon is nowhere to be seen, which is perhaps not so strange, as Bice often hides in Harry's shirt, or his hair, and even now was off in the grass at the bottom of the steps and out of sight.

"Petunia Evans," the man says in a slow, deep-voiced drawl, but the man only gives his aunt the barest of looks before returning his gaze to Harry. A little self-conscious under the scrutiny, Harry pushes his shaggy hair back from his forehead and the man's eyes dart after the action. Something in his face changes and he's looking at Harry differently, hard and dark and cold and Harry suddenly aches for Bice's touch and comfort.

"It's Petunia Dursley now, Snape," his aunt tells him, her voice haughty against his dark stare. She's pulled herself up to stand tall and is using the height of the steps to look down on the man - Snape - below her. "We married eight years ago."

Snape's face is very blank, hiding his emotions and Harry finds it very strange. He can always tell what Vernon and Petunia and Dudley are thinking because their faces tells him all the time, but Snape's face doesn't say anything at all except for maybe unimpressed. Harry can hear Petunia shift, her shoes scraping against the concrete behind him even as Snape continues to stare her down from below them both.

Bice chooses this moment to scamper out of the grass at the bottom of the steps. She's still in the shape of the sailfin lizard, and her large mottled body is a shock of color against the white concrete. Petunia shrieks and Neldan caws loudly even as Snape's gaze snaps to the long lizard. Bice just scurries up the steps a lot faster than the speed in which she went down them. She slows only once she reaches Harry's foot and her nails are sharp even through his jeans as she crawls up his leg to perch on his knees.

Harry runs a finger down her side and its a stark comfort after the stretch of the distance and the strange scrutiny of the man, Snape.

"What is that?!"

Harry hunches and cants his head around to peer at his aunt. She is clutching at her chest and staring at Bice with a mixture of displeasure and disgust. Harry knows it is because of Bice's shape, but doesn't know why Aunt Petunia dislikes lizards so much. It is a common enough shape for daemons to take. Many of the boys's daemons at Primary have taken the shape of a lizard at some point. A couple even have been snakes a few times.

But Petunia likes feathers or fur, and anything else isn't quite normal enough for her.

"Bice," Harry finally responds to the woman.

Petunia sputters even as Neldan caws into her ear. "Unnatural color, it's sure," the bird says loudly, even though he is turned as if whispering to her. "Strange shape! Where'd he get it?"

"What sort of form is that?" she demands, and somehow, Harry is sure that telling her the species' name is not going to go over well.

"A sailfin lizard," Snape's voice cuts through both Petunia's sputtering and Neldan's noisy exclamations. "The shape at any rate is that of a sailfin lizard, though the coloration is certainly fantastical and lacking in any real intelligent knowledge of the species."

"I don't care about what species it is, Snape!"

As Petunia turns her ire to the dark man, Bice shifts into a brilliantly blue snake and slithers up Harry's leg. It is a blatant thumb at Petunia - who is not paying them any attention - and Neldan, who hasn't taken his eyes off of them. Neldan positively shrieks at the serpent form, his voice piercing even to Harry. He can't imagine the noise it'd cause to Petunia, whose ear is right next to the gull's loud mouth.

Petunia reacts by swiping her arm up at her daemon, dislodging the bird and scrambling away from her position in front of the doors and above Harry's perch on the steps. She gives her daemon a baleful look but dismisses him in favor of her nephew. As if she had known what Neldan's cawing reaction was about, her eyes go straight to Bice - who has already shifted to the positively innocent shape of a gold and white patched guinea pig and is clinging to his t-shirt by tiny hands. Harry just watches his aunt through the shaggy fringe of his hair, exasperated and amused by his daemon's antics.

It is unlike Bice to be so blatantly rebellious, especially in the face of a stranger.

Perhaps it is because his aunt seems to know the man, and dislike him so much, that gives Bice the courage to flaunt her penchant for unnatural colorations.

Harry shifts his gaze from his aunt to the man at the bottom of the stairs. Snape is watching him with narrow, dark eyes and his expression is still unreadable. The man's daemon, also, is still unseen and Harry wonders about it.

"Oooo, do you think he saw my snake shape?" Bice whispers to him as she crawls up his chest. "Where's his daemon?" she asks and Harry suddenly wonders if her first question had been about Neldan or the strange man staring them down. He's quite sure that both Snape and his aunt's daemon saw the blue snake Bice had turned into.

"I don't know," Harry admits. "I haven't seen her."

Bice skitters up to his shoulder and around his neck to peer at the man from under his hair. "Where is she? Where is she?"

Harry curls his neck and tries to see his daemon perched on his shoulder. "Why?"

Bice finally turns away from the man and gives him a sort of sheepish look, even as her eyes dart back to Snape, as if she can't quite stop looking at him. Harry is distracted from this phenomenon by his aunt's sudden and painful grip on his other shoulder. She hauls him to his feet with little trouble, and as Harry finds his own balance, she still does not let go of him.

"Get in the car," she hisses, pushing him down the steps before her. Any response he may have had dies as he stumbles down the stairs, struggling to keep his feet under him as she pushes him down toward the car. He runs headlong into the passenger side door, his hands the only thing saving his face from a painful connection to the window.

Petunia circles the vehicle with sharp, angry clacks of her heels against the paving and Harry watches her warily. Neldan is circling her head with short, unintelligible cries, his flight a tight spiral that brings him very close to her without ever touching her, as if he doesn't dare to do so.

Harry is still curious about the man from Petunia's past - Snape - but his aunt's anger is such that he doesn't dare to take his eyes off of her or her daemon. It is rare for him to be wary of her, truly wary, but this is one of those times and even the mystery of the dark man behind him on the steps cannot cut through his sharp vigilance.

He knows this lesson.

He watches her like a cornered animal, even as she unlocks the doors and he slides into the back behind the passenger seat - the furthest from the woman he can get in the small confines of the vehicle's interior. She would have to lean back between the front seats to reach him and he would see it coming, but still he does not look away. He knows this mood. He does not think he will soon forget it, and the lesson is still fresh - Bice's burns are still pink and sore to touch.

Neldan settles on the dash, his yellow eyes alternating from Petunia to Harry in the back. Petunia roughly tosses a folder of papers into the seat beside Harry and starts the car.

Harry does not bother with the gull. Neldan has never touched him, but he can see the bird at least, in his gaze and that's good because he's not sure if Bice is paying the daemon any attention at all, like she should be. He's quite sure that she's watching the man, Snape, on the stairs before the soot-stained building as the car drives away.

"What's that say?" Bice asks in a whisper.

"Huh?"

"The papers, look."

Harry only affords the folder on the seat a quick glance before returning to his vigilance of Petunia. She isn't even glancing at the rearview mirror, though, and her gaze hasn't wavered from the road before them, not once.

"Looks important, Harry," Bice urges into his ear, "look!"

Harry finally drops his eyes to give the folder a better look and notices an emblem across its cover that says 'County Surrey Correctional Facility' in a circular seal with a noble looking, stylized bird at its center. Stamped across the entire cover is the word, 'Released' with a date just past scribbled along a stamped line. There is a name printed in blotchy typeset along the folder's tab: Evans, Farraday.

ooo

"Farraday?"

"Shhh."

"But who -"

"Don't ask. Remember the frying pan?"

...

"Later, Bice."


	4. Discovery

**The Silver Lining**

Harry Potter X His Dark Materials

04 Discovery

Severus has told her she's a Witch many times but it isn't until she gets her Hogwarts letter that they really believe him. Even his stories of a whole other world seem just too fantastical to believe and even with the letter fresh in her hand there is still a sliver of the thought that it is all just Severus, having her on.

Lily goes to him with the letter, all full of excitement and jittery nerves anyways.

Ffionn is a brightly colored bird today, a riot of reds and violets and baby blues - some sort of parrot - and she flies around Lily's head in happy circles.

Severus is already at the swing set, his toes digging rivets in the turf beneath him as he rocks back and forth. His daemon is visible today, a little black bird perched on the bar directly over his head. Lily only sees him because she's looking and Ffionn points out the tiny dark daemon as she does another circle past her ear.

"Severus!" Lily calls, as soon as she is sure that he will hear her yell from across the park.

She waves the packet of crisp parchments in the air as she runs and he answers her with a smile. Lily's smile slips a little when he doesn't rise to greet her and when she finally comes to a huffing stop next to him it only takes her a quick minute to see why.

"Oh no," Ffionn says and settles heavily onto Lily's shoulder. Lily can see her colors change out of the corner of her eye, from happy reds and blues to a very subdued palette of grays that look morose and stormy.

He is trying to hide it, canting his head at such an angle that his long hair curtains half of his face, but Lily knows this position, she's seen Petunia use it too, and it always means that there is something ugly behind that curtain of hair.

"Oh, Sev," Lily breathes out and before he can rise out of the swing or scurry away from her she reaches out and pushes his hair away from his face.

The bruise is ugly. It trails across his cheek and nose in a mottled pattern of blues and yellows that mix into an ugly green sort of tone. There is an old scab across the bridge of his nose that tells Lily he had got hit hard and it had been a few days already since it happened. She wonders if he has been home at all since, and if not - likely not - where he has been sleeping.

"It's not so bad," Severus tries, but Lily just Looks at him and he stops trying to excuse it away.

Ffionn flutters off of Lily's shoulder in unusual silence and joins Severus' Barloch above their heads. Neither daemon says a word and they just sit there in their little dark bird forms, shoulders just barely touching because Barloch doesn't like to be touched and Ffionn knows this but still wants to comfort.

Lily and Severus don't speak either, not when Lily is reaching out to touch her fingers to his battered face and wishing with all her might that she can make that something special - magic! - happen when she wants it to - right now! - and just heal him already because it just isn't fair.

She feels the flutter in her tummy and the goosebumps down her arms, but his face remains ugly and discolored and its like the special power she has just can't cross the gap between them from her fingers to his cheek.

She lets out a frustrated, choking sound and his wide eyes tell her that the tears in her eyes aren't just her imagination and she is crying for him.

He looks completely awed, whether by her attempt or her tears she has no idea and he reaches up to mirror her position and his fingers just barely touch her cheek under her eye. It is a fleeting, feather-light touch and he retreats, pushing against the ground with his heels and he swings away from her, his long coltish legs keeping him at a distance even as he remains half seated in the swing.

"It's not so bad," he repeats, still rather wide-eyed.

Lily huffs then, and twirls to plop herself into the swing next to him.

"You got your letter," he says, his voice holding a note of excited pride.

This gives her leave to smile again, and they mutually decide to ignore the ugly bruise on his face and the continued, studious silence of his daemon above them and Lily tells him all about how she found the barn owl awaiting her atop the back porch railing and how she just knew what it was because Severus had told her that it would happen just that way.

ooo

They both found escape in the discovery of a new and wondrous world and if Lily had known, then, that her future son would find the same sort of escape there, she would have not stopped crying that day.

ooo

Aunt Petunia's reaction to the strange letter with the green script piques Harry's interest more than the letter does at first. He has never gotten mail before and he sees the address long enough to read it and how does anybody know that he lives in the cupboard under the stairs?!

Petunia spots it as she looks up at him from whatever gray brew she has steeping on the stove - and Harry has a sinking feeling its something for him if only because she keeps muttering his name while stirring the noxious thing. She seems to know exactly what the letter is right away because she snatches it out of his hands so fast that Harry does not even have time to turn it around and see the red wax seal holding it together.

"Vernon!" Her screech is rather reminiscent of Neldan's usual cawing and then Vernon is there and they are both talking about some mysterious them and Dudley is waving about his Smelting's Stick and demanding what is not his, but Harry's.

Vernon tosses them both out of the kitchen by the scruffs of their neck.

Four days and hundreds of stubborn letters later the entire Dursley household is eating stale cornflakes for breakfast in the Railview Hotel in Cokesworth. Harry remembers the soot-stained city as where he saw the man Petunia knew, Snake, or Stape, or something, and the city has not changed in the intervening years. It is still all identical bricklaid buildings dripping with decades worth of soot and grime and the towering chimney is still looming over it all. The Railview Hotel is just the same red brick stained dark that even the persistent drizzle through the night cannot wash away.

Harry is pushing his soggy cornflakes around in his milk and Bice is happily sucking up honey from the pot at his elbow through her long hummingbird beak. The Dursley's are very quiet, though Dudley is complaining every minute or so under his breath and Petal is whining under his chair. Vernon and Aunt Petunia's stoney silence is enough to keep even Dudley from whining about his missed television programs and video games and Harry is content enough that they are leaving him alone to eat.

He cannot stop thinking about the mysterious letters though, and he wishes desperately that he had just pocketed the first one before Petunia spotted it and avoided this entire mess.

"Excuse me," a hotel attendant interrupts only to receive a beady-eyed stare from Vernon. "But is any of you a Mr. Potter? Is just that theres sumone here lookin for a Mr. Potter."

Vernon bellows "Absolutely not!" at the same time Harry says, "I'm Harry Potter."

The reedy attendant looks rapidly between Vernon and Harry but before he can respond to the conflicting claims a darkly dressed man appears behind him with a glower.

Petunia positively shrieks and Vernon's gone quite purple in the face but Harry doesn't really care because he's seen this man before, here in this very city.

"That's him!" Bice exclaims into his ear. Harry can feel that she's changed into something small and furry but he's too busy watching this strange man to bother to look and see what form she's taken.

He is tall and lean and dark with sallow skin and broad shoulders. His hair is long and hanging limply around his face, which sports a too-large nose that is rather hooked and his eyes are very dark and they are staring at Harry very intensely. Harry thinks he should be nervous under that look but Bice is too excited about seeing the man again and her emotions are filtering down their bond.

"Snape!" Petunia gasps out and her voice is more horrified than angry. Harry affords her a glance, but Bice doesn't take her eyes off this Snape. Petunia is angry, but she is also shaking her head in some sort of awful expression of denial.

"Petunia Dursley," Snape says and his voice is deep and rumbles across them like distant thunder. He does not even look at Vernon or Dudley and after that brief greeting he turns back to Harry. "And Harry Potter, celebrity boy-child."

Harry frowns at the way he says his name, as if he's spitting it out in a curse, and what is with the celebrity comment?

"No words of greeting, Potter?" Snape chides, "Tsk. Where are your manners?"

"I didn't catch your name, sir," Harry quips, and Bice nips his ear for his cheek, but he ignores her as Snape scowls darkly at him. It is obvious that the man is displeased, and annoyed and doesn't like Harry at all. Its incredibly frustrating, because Harry does not know why, and usually he at least can attribute the neighbors' dislike to the Dursley's lies about his deviancy, or the other children's' wariness because of Dudley's gang or something. But this man dislikes him without any explanation.

"You will call me Professor, or Sir, Potter," Snape tells him.

"Professor?" Bice chirps from her perch on his shoulder.

"Professor of what?" Harry asks.

"Is he a teacher at secondary?" Bice asks into his ear.

Snape ignore Harry's question and likely does not hear Bice's whispers. Instead he turns to Petunia with a faint sneer and produces a very familiar envelope with green letters from the depths of his black jacket.

"My letter!"

"Absolutely not!" Vernon bellows. "I will not allow it!"

"Allow, Muggle?" Snape says, turning his dark gaze to Vernon, who goes from purple to puce very quickly and does not speak again for a long time. "No Muggle will disallow the illustrious -" he spits it out in a tone of clear contradiction to the word's meaning - "Harry Potter to attend the school for which he has been enrolled since birth."

Snape dismisses Vernon and his sputtering as if he is beneath notice and he had only spoken to him in order to silence him, like swatting at a mosquito.

"Muggle?" Bice says, her voice louder in their curiosity. "What's a Muggle?"

"What they are," Snape tells them snidely, "and what you are not."

Harry finds Snape's willingness to speak directly to his daemon curious. It is usually frowned upon and Petunia has yelled at him before for responding to someone else's daemon because it is just not done.

"What are we then?" Harry asks.

Snape's sneer turns into a fierce scowl and his eyes dart to Petunia in frigid anger. "He does not know?"

Petunia does not seem to be cowed by him, though Neldan is huddled on the back of her chair, most of his body hidden behind her head and hair with only the tips of his tail feathers and his beak peaking through.

"No," she says, lifting her chin. "And I forbid it!"

"What don't we know?" Bice whispers into Harry's ear. "Harry!"

Harry shrugs and Bice flows down his chest, shifting from some little hamster shape into that of a sugar glider. Her coat ripples and changes color into an unnatural orange and black striped pattern that looks like a tiger's. She perches on the arm of Harry's chair with her forelegs atop the edge of the table, her long fingers gripping the surface tightly in her excitement and she pokes her large round eyes all over Snape's body.

"Where is she?" Bice asks of Snape's unseen daemon. "Oh! What don't we know? Will you tell us?"

Harry reaches out to settle a hand over her furry body and her excited trembling slows at the touch. Their curiosity is split and strong and she reveals it for them all to see but Harry is far too curious to be self conscious about the display of his daemon. Her intense emotions are overriding most of his own surprise at her willingness to be so visible amongst such a hostile group of people.

"No! Not now! Not ever!" Petunia shrieks. "I forbid such talk. Such nonsense! I won't have such freakishness in my home!" She shakes a sharp finger at Snape. "Don't you say a word, Snape! Don't you dare!"

Harry watches his aunt in her fury even as Bice finally succumbs to her usual shyness in the face of Dursley-rage and scurries back into hiding under his shirt.

"I will not be dictated to, woman. Be silent!" Snape snaps at her and Petunia's mouth shuts with an audible clack of her teeth.

Snape then turns his dark eyes to Harry and hands over the envelope that Harry has been trying to get ahold of all week. The man eyes him quickly, taking note of Bice's sudden disappearance with a frown.

Snape's explanation of what exactly Harry is and the Dursley's are not is very succinct and direct and the absolute awe of it all is enough to silence even Bice's questions. In the face of the severe man and his wand - which is used to visibly zip Petunia's mouth shut when she attempts to yell her forbiddance again - is enough for Harry not to question the truthfulness of what he says.

It rings too true to disbelieve.

Snape and Harry leave the Dursley's in the hotel's dining hall alone. Harry follows him with some wariness, but mostly excitement. He's going to get his school supplies! He's going to go to Hogwarts! He's a wizard!

ooo

Diagon Alley is a bustling hub of color and people and daemons and shops selling all sorts of things familiar and strange and magical. Harry spends most of their time there craning his head and wishing he had about eight more eyes just to see it all. Snape escorts them through the bustling street with an air of restrained annoyance and Harry doesn't even care enough to determine if the man is annoyed with him, having to play babysitter or the gaggle of wizards and witches and their colorful daemons around them.

Gringotts is a wild ride and a surprise. Harry emerges from the depths grinning like a loon, both from the cart ride and the gold now stuffed in his pockets. Snape takes one look at his wide manic grin and turns on the spot to lead them out of the marbled lobby.

"Your list of supplies," he says, handing the parchment to Harry as they descend the wide marble steps out of Gringotts. "We will begin down the way at Dashwood's for robes, circle the alley in order and we will end this trip right back at the Leaky Cauldron, quickly, efficiently and with no fuss."

Harry nods mutely and trails after the man further down the street. They pass the Magical Menagerie and Gambol & Japes, which is overflowing with brightly colored items and children. Harry pauses to eye a sign advertising dung bombs before Snape calls him to keep up.

Harry does not object against the professor's sharp disapproval to the magical joke shop.

Harry purchases school robes at Dashwood's Second-hand Robe Shop, a holly wand from the curious man at Ollivander's, a stack of books from Flourish and Blotts, parchment, quills, cauldrons a beautiful snowy owl for post and potions supplies at the Apothecary which is where they spend the most time outside of Ollivander's. Snape inspects every single piece of his equipment and opens the starter kit to root through it before nodding in thin approval of its contents.

Harry gets the very strong impression that the man knows something of potions.

Throughout it all Harry ventures questions and Snape gives curt answers. At the bookstore the man adds three books to Harry's pile of school texts; a very thick encyclopedia of potions ingredients, The Magical History of Magical Britain, Thirty-First Edition and a thin hardcover book that was simply titled: Magic & Law which promised to be terribly dull.

"I am not your source for everything dealing with the magical world, Potter," Snape tells him as he adds the books to the armload Harry already has. "I do hope you know how to read."

Harry's response, "Only in English, sir," earns him a reproving look and the book on magical law.

"Perhaps I shall test the claim if you manage to make your way to Hogwarts, Potter."

Harry is mostly unperturbed, however. Snape, while caustic and occasionally insulting, has not once reached out to him and the man's daemon, though absent, has not harassed Bice at all and the man had brought him to Diagon Alley and the wizarding world and Harry could not bring himself to dislike him completely for that reason alone.

ooo

"A Wizard! Harry!"

"I know."

"A Wizard!"

...

"I can't wait until September the first! It is going to be just brilliant!"

"I know!"


	5. Gateway

**The Silver Lining**

Harry Potter X His Dark Materials

05 Gateway

Petunia and Neldan take them to King's Cross on September first because their father is still passed out on the sofa in his bedroom and neither sister is ever willing to wake him after one of his nights.

Ffionn has taken the shape of some spindly legged gazelle and is endlessly bounding around Lily as they make their way through the growing crowds of the station.

"Impala," Ffionn informs her as she circles. "C'mon Nel!"

"I will not," Neldan informs stiffly and Ffionn pauses long enough to peer up at the herring gull sitting rigidly on Petunia's shoulder. Neldan has Settled, but only recently, just yesterday, and while they are so happy for Petunia and Neldan it is still easy to forget in their excitement that Neldan can no longer shift into similar forms and play.

"You won't even fly with me?" Ffionn asks then, shifting into a very similar gull shape, but with darker colorations than Neldan has. Neldan, though, is not in the mood to accommodate Ffionn and Lily frowns at the sadness filtering through their bond as Neldan snuffs them.

Ffionn, subdued, imitates Neldan and perches atop Lily's shoulder and they follow Petunia through the early morning throngs to the point where Platform Nine meets up with Ten.

They are greeted by a stern, tall woman in a tartan wool dress and black hat sitting primly atop her head. The woman's daemon is a golden colored cat, but is larger than a house cat, some sort of wild medium sized breed with a bushy, ringed tail. He is seated primly at his human's feet.

They spot Lily right away.

"Hullo Professor McGonagoll," Lily greets as Ffionn echoes the greeting to the Professor's daemon, Alphardic.

"Good morning Ms. Evans," she returns with a strict nod in both sister's direction. "If you stay with me here, I will instruct you on how to access the Platform."

"Of course!" Lily says, "We've been ever so curious!"

McGonagoll smiles a little at this, but then turns to Petunia. "I am afraid that you may not be able to access the Gateway, Ms. Evans."

"Oh, what?" Ffionn says softly even as Lily turns forlornly to her sister. Petunia's face initially expresses her disappointment and rejection but it is wiped away very quickly and replaced by a moue of distaste.

"Very well," Petunia says, her voice tight, and Professor McGonagoll frowns at this. "I am late to class as it is."

Petunia turns on her heel without another word and begins to stalk away. Lily lets out a surprised sound and chases after her, catching the sleeve of her navy school jumper. Petunia stops but pulls out of her grasp just the same.

"Tunia," Lily starts, sad that her sister is so suddenly cold. Petunia's eyes soften a little and the perpetual anger that she has so much of lately fades a little and Lily can see that the barring of her to the magical platform hurts.

"Tunia-dan," Lily says, addressing them both as a whole in one combined name.

Petunia's face twists into displeasure suddenly and she snaps back, "stop doing that, Lily. It is not acceptable!"

Lily knows what she is talking about, Petunia has scolded her for it before, but never so coldly, so harshly and it silences her completely. She knows why. It is not really normal to speak to another person's daemon, nor really to acknowledge that human and daemon are one, connected, the same even though everybody knows it. It just isn't done and even though Lily thinks it is just silly, Petunia wants nothing more than to be perfectly normal, thank you very much.

So Lily drops her head with a very quiet mumbled apology to Petunia, and Ffionn speaks a polite and rather formal farewell to Neldan, who deigns to only respond with a regal nod of his head.

"I will see you at Christmas, Petunia?" Lily asks. "Our breaks are at the same time."

Petunia is silent for a long time and Lily looks up at her fearfully. Petunia is older, taller and longer and she is already dressed in her school uniform. Petunia doesn't attend a boarding school, but a local day school that has her coming and going instead of all shut in like children. Lily was going to go to the same, until her Hogwarts letter came and changed it all. Lily is wearing jeans and a pink jumper and it makes her feel so young next to her sister who is already sixteen and looks so grown up!

"You should stay there for the Hols," Petunia says finally and Lily can feel her face just fall.

Petunia says nothing else to her and again turns on her heel to march away. Lily watches her leave and can't bring herself to chase after her sister again.

ooo

When Professor McGonagoll escorts her through the Gateway to her new world, Lily will stubbornly return home for Christmas to see her sister and even their father, but it will be the only year of her schooling that she ever does so.

ooo

Vernon drops Harry off at King's Cross without a word. However, as Harry pulls his new trunk from the boot and struggles to haul it onto the curb, Pembe hangs her head out the open car window and squints at him darkly.

"Good riddance then," she pipes, her voice high and a little squeaky. Bice, who has been a harvest mouse hidden in his shirt all morning, pokes her head out in response.

"Bice," Harry warns softly, hoping to stave off any particularly nasty comments his daemon may feel the need to make. Bice shifts then, from tiny mouse to a clinging monkey with a wild, brightly colored mane of hair and sticks a long tongue out at the mole who doesn't really see the gesture at all, but Vernon does.

"Good riddance, boy," his uncle echoes and with a rather loud squeal of his tires, Vernon drives off, leaving his nephew on a street corner in London. Harry just stares after the black car balefully, wondering if his uncle will bother to pick him back up at the end of the school year or not and trying to decide if he cares at all.

Bice crawls out of his shirt and perches on his shoulder, her tail curling around his chest and under his arm. Harry glances at her to find her making obnoxious faces after the disappearing car and he barks out a laugh at the sight of her contorting lips and tongue.

She has shifted into some kind of jungle monkey with brilliant shaggy fur. It is an uncontested orange in color, and covers her in a pillow of long hair all along her body, down her tail and rings her face in the wildest mane of hair he has seen outside of a lion. As it is she still looks like she had stuck her finger into a light socket.

"Am I funny?" he asks impishly, looking down at his shaggy body.

"You look like a cross between a monkey and a Pomeranian," Harry tells him, grinning.

Bice huffs. "Lion tamarin," he informs him. Harry just shrugs, upsetting his perch enough that he crawls up to sit on his head.

"I like the golden eyes," Harry commented as he grabs his trunk and begins the long trek into and through King's Cross Station. He can feel Bice preening from his compliment, probably trying to tame that mess of hair that covers him.

With the orange, hairy monkey draped atop his head, it is no wonder the slightly frazzled woman mistakes him for one of her own copper-haired children. There are at least five of them circling her in wild orbits, all loudly proclaiming, their daemons scampering around them like a bunch of little moons. It is like a rather horribly executed play of the solar system, complete with astroid belt of luggage carts and animal cages.

Harry hears the words 'Platform Nine and Three Quarters' which was the major reason that he lets the woman push him into a wall. The other being her unexpected strength for a woman who looks so pillowy and soft.

Instead of the unrelenting brick of a mortared wall, however, Harry and Bice suddenly find themselves somewhere else entirely. The busy platform before them is a riot of colors and shapes and sounds, a hodgepodge of human and daemon of variable shape and size. It is nothing at all like either Platform Nine, with its quiet thin crowd after a recent departing train, nor Platform Ten which had been bustling with workers over a mechanical error on it's rusty green engine.

No. Platform Nine and Three Quarters sports a brilliant red engine of some antique model with a bustle of people that are dressed in the most eclectic assortment of dress imaginable.

"So that's what Snape meant about the barrier," Bice comments and Harry can feel him twisting to look at the brick wall behind them.

"I guess so," Harry says.

"It wasn't quite what I had imagined."

Harry grins and Bice slides down from the top of his head to drape over his shoulders and peer at the bustling, wild crowd ahead of them.

"It's better," Harry comments.

They are jostled from their inspection by another body running into them from behind.

Having forgotten entirely about the wall-turned-doorway and the family of redheads behind him, Harry had managed to stand straight in the way of of one of them coming through behind him. The force of it sends them both to the ground in a tangle of limbs of luggage.

"Oh, sorry!" the redhead exclaims, trying to stand and in the process kneeing Harry in his ribs, then stepped on his hand. "Excuse me, sorry!"

"S'alright," Harry manages, clutching his side and scooting away from the long-limbed redheaded monster. With distance he can finally see that it isn't just one large person who had ran into him, but rather two long-limbed ones. Identical ones. Their daemons are scrabbling around the pair in twin jackrabbit forms, all hind limbs and ears and excited exclamations and laughs.

Above his head, Harry feels the steady displacement of air that is caused by Bice's flapping wings. Neither of the twins have yet bothered to stand up. In point of fact, they appear quite content to remain in a tangled heap on the floor with their daemons chattering at them while they laugh.

The arrival of redhead number three brings Harry into their plan.

Their equally tall, and slightly older looking brother appears through the bricks and promptly falls flat over the twins tangled on the floor. His daemon, who had been a proud looking bird of black colors flaps wildly and caws out indignant sounds as they join the twins.

Harry just sort of watches the mess with a rather stupefied expression, having never really seen a collection of teenagers act quite like that before. Bice settles onto his shoulder and Harry catches the flash of green feathers from the corner of his eye.

"Fascinating," Bice comments, watching the tangled display with as much interest as Harry.

"Yes."

The twins eventually make it to their feet, collect their belongings and corral their bounding daemons, all before their brother manages to right himself. Harry suddenly finds himself hemmed in by the two identical red-heads, one on each arm as they haul him away with them, leaving their brother behind to sort himself.

"Well met!" One exclaims.

"I'm Fred!"

"No I'm Fred," the other says, "you're George!"

"Am I? Are you quite certain?"

"Certainly."

"I'm Harry," Harry intercedes, still quite fascinated by the two. "And Bice," he points to his daemon who is trailing them in a very bright green parrot shape. Harry catches sight of a red bill and there is a light blue tinge to his tail feathers.

"Wotcher!" the twins says simultaneously to Harry and in exactly the same inflection.

"Tovi!" pipes one of the identical jackrabbits that are bounding about them.

"And Taffy," says the other, and it is quite obvious that they are speaking to Bice, as the jackrabbits introduce themselves by leaping up near his flight path. Harry hasn't a clue which is which - either for the twins nor for their daemons, though at the moment George - who thinks he's Fred - is on Harry's right side.

"Got my trunk?" Harry asks them curiously.

"Got it!" George says with seeming endless enthusiasm and Harry glances behind him to see all three of their trunks, his with Hedwig's cage sitting atop it, ambling along behind them as if they had sprouted legs of their own.

"That's a neat trick," Bice comments and flies a neat circle around Hedwig's cage. The snowy owl merely peers at the parrot through one slitted eye before turning her head half way around and settling into sleep, apparently completely undisturbed by the chaos of the platform.

"We've many, of course," Fred comments with a grin.

"Maybe we'll show you a few of them?" George says and Harry thinks his smile is a little too sharp.

"Maybe I'll pass," Harry tells them, which instead of turning them off just makes the twins laugh, delighted.

Navigating the brilliant red locomotive and the narrow hallway with its endless stream of compartments filled to the brim with chattering students of all ages is made much easier with the twins, who are much bigger and seem to be something of a force of nature. Many students simply get out of the way and the stragglers are able to demonstrate to Harry that he was right in refusing their tricks.

"Here we go," George says - though Harry is quite sure that it is Fred, simple because he introduced himself as George - and the twins escort him and all their luggage into an empty compartment. Somewhere in the shuffle of settling the trunks under the seats and Hedwig in her cage in the racks overhead one of the twins catch sight of the jagged scar on his forehead.

"Blimey, George," he says and Harry pays attention enough to note which one is now George and which is Fred and he's quite sure they've switched on him.

"I see it!" the other says.

"See what?" Harry asks, but Bice is who answers.

"You're scar."

Harry brushes at the fringe in front of his face, alternately baring and covering the scar. He remembers how the people in Diagon Alley had reacted to it, always staring at his forehead instead of his eyes and how they all wanted to shake his hand at once and it wasn't until Bice's monkey tail got stepped on that Professor Snape got in between them all and Harry got away. Bice had spent the remaining trip as a very small spider hiding away in his hair, something that did not go unnoticed by Snape.

"Weasley," Fred tells him and Harry blinks owlishly at the sudden word.

"You're a Potter," George elaborates, "And we're a Weasley, see!"

Harry huffs out a laugh which becomes a real smile when neither of them stare at his head, nor comment on Bice's current male gender and instead pull something suspicious from one of their trunks and slink right back out the door, mumbling about guard details and celebrities and duties.

Harry is suddenly left alone in a compartment with Bice, a sleeping Hedwig and three trunks stowed expertly under the seats.

Harry remains blinking at the closed door to the compartment for a long minute, feeling a little harried and still trying to catch his breath from the crowd and madness of the twins.

"I like them."

Harry lets out a bark of a laugh and throws himself across one of the bench seats. Bice lands on the cushion next to him and flows into a shape that is almost perfectly like that of the twins' jackrabbit daemons, but he is the same color as the twin's bright copper hair instead of anything natural. Harry runs his hand down his back and tweaks his fluff of a tail, admiring his choice and amused by it as well.

"Pretty," he compliments with a crooked smile.

"I like it for now," he says. His long ears swing around and Harry thinks the endless twitching of his nose is positively adorable.

They watch the thinning crowd on the platform out the window until the train ambles out of the station. Harry is rather fascinated by the red-headed family bustling about just two windows down and he almost wishes he could hear their conversation, especially when the twins flit through them in unending movement.

"Maybe we'll be in their house?" Bice says, pushing his twitching nose to the window in order to peer at them better.

"Maybe."

ooo

Harry settles into the seat with the big book of magical history that Snape had picked out for him. While the early chapters on the legends and myths surrounding Merlin and Arthur were fascinating, Harry had found his own name in the latest chapters weeks ago and had begun to steadily work his way through the book in reverse.

They are alone until the door slams open to admit two bodies, two daemons and a billow of orange smoke. Harry vaguely catches sight of the two boys, one already dressed in black Hogwarts robes before the smoke fills the compartment. The door slides shut with another slam.

Harry hunkers low in the seat and pulls the hem of his t-shirt up to cover his nose, even though the orange smoke doesn't smell smokey.

"Pumpkins," Bice comments from his lap, atop the book. "The smoke smells like pumpkins."

The other two boys stumble into the compartment, coughing and making a lot of noise. Harry's foot gets stepped on, and one of the boys' daemons darts across the back of the seat in some sort of sleek furry shape that has Harry leaning forward away from it.

"This is ridiculous," one of their daemons says, then one of the boys calls out a spell which makes the smoke swirl ominously around them in a gust of wind. Someone lets out a surprised yell, and then a pained one. It doesn't clear it at all, and in fact only makes it worse and Harry finally manages to find the latch to the window and slide it open.

Spell-wrought tornado, orange smoke and all get sucked out of the thrown window.

The smell of pumpkins linger.

Left behind are two very disheveled boys, both with dark hair and eyes and rather pale complexions. The elder, and already dressed in his robes trimmed with green, is squarer of face next to the barely younger, but far more reedy boy. There is a red fox and a black colored sleek house cat along with them. All of them, and Harry included, are looking rather ruffled at the sudden smoke and wind disturbance.

"Hullo," Harry says, watching the two with interest.

The younger recovers first, and sits up from his sprawl across the opposite seat where he'd fallen at some point. He is long-limbed and skinny, and he has little trouble reaching across the aisle to offer Harry his hand.

"Hello," he says and when Harry grips his hand to shake, continues, "I'm Theodore Nott."

"Harry."

Theodore eyes him for a long minute but when his surname is clearly not forthcoming, he gestures to his elder.

"This is Egan Wilkes."

"Pleasure," Wilkes says from up his nose. "Muggleborn?"

Harry blinks at the sudden address. "What makes you think so?"

Wilkes's eyes rake coldly down Harry's body and then completely away from him. The boy's cat daemon jumps up into his arms, and then to his shoulder, not even deigning to offer Bice half a glance.

"Your clothes tell me all I need to know," Wilkes tells him, favoring his daemon with his look rather than giving Harry another glance at all, even though it's Harry who he is talking to.

Harry is less hurt by this treatment than he is annoyed. He is still wearing a set of Dudley's old clothes, and they are both a little dingy and far too big for him. Also, they are very Muggle, and Harry picked up enough from his day in Diagon Alley to know that.

Harry returns Wilkes's eye-down look, which is noticed by both boys, even if Wilkes isn't looking directly at him. Theodore's eyes widen at the response, but Wilkes finally turns his eyes back to Harry, narrowed.

Harry dismisses Wilkes in the same way the older boy had done to him. In silence, by looking away from him.

"Where did you collect that pumpkin smoke?" Harry asks Theodore.

Theodore's eyes widen a little more then return to something like normal. Like Harry, he does not look directly at Wilkes and Harry almost smiles.

"A couple of older years dropped some sort of smoke bomb in the corridor," Theodore answers, "I think they were brothers, they looked very much alike."

Harry suspects he may know who he's talking about, but doesn't quite get a chance to continue the conversation when Wilkes speaks up again.

"Now see here, you Mudblood, twerp!"

"Egan!" Theodore says at the same time Harry stands to face the older boy. Wilkes is taller and certainly heavier, though not by a great amount and he is no where near Dudley's girth, so Harry suspects that he has a good chance against him. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Bice poised at the edge of the seat, still in the coppery jackrabbit shape inspired by the twins, but he has his ears pinned back and his big fore-teeth are largely displayed through a wide-mouthed snarl.

"Both of my parents were magical, Wilkes," Harry spits out at him. "Don't insult them when you don't even know my name."

"Some name I should know?"

Harry smirks thinly. "I know more about your family than you do mine at this moment," he says. That history book had been so informative. It came complete with an entire chapter dedicated to the Death Eater Trials of the early 1980's and Sr. Wilkes had been listed along with his companions, killed resisting arrest. "Wilkes. What reputation did your father leave you?"

Wilkes is looking both murderous and a little sickly now and his daemon has her fur raised and is hissing quietly at him.

Beside Harry on the bench, Bice is shifting from angered jackrabbit into something much larger and scaled and Harry recognizes the brightly colored sailfin lizard as a shape he's taken before. He's chosen a dark red color with red eyes and it is a very striking look with the tall fins along his spine fading into a bloody red.

Bice hisses from his throat and Wilkes' eyes dart to him in sudden alarm.

Wilkes leaves with little more than half-mumbled words and Harry does not bother to hear them. He returns to his seat next to Bice when the compartment door shuts after the departed Wilkes.

"His father's daemon was a lizard," Theodore offers into the ensuing silence.

"I didn't know."

"How could you have?" Theodore shrugs, but he's eyeing Harry a little warily. "Are you going to call out my father, too?"

Harry stares at him, lost. Theodore does not volunteer his meaning and Harry scrambles to find it in the past conversation and has a sinking suspicion that he knows.

"Your father was -"

"Yes."

Theodore does not elaborate, nor does he defend, and he is watching Harry very carefully his face blank. Harry isn't sure that he much cares if the senior Nott was a Death Eater. The Dursleys are all jerks and while Dudley may take after his father, Harry certainly does not and he was 'raised' by them as well. Harry rolls his shoulders in a shrug and leans back into the seat cushions.

"Only if you insult mine," Harry offers.

Theodore thinks about this for a long few minutes, stiff and uncomfortable in his seat while his fox daemon is curled tightly around his feet, staring at Bice with rather wide eyes. Finally, Theodore relaxes marginally, and Harry can see his shoulders fall from the up-tight defensive posture they had taken.

Theodore's voice is lighter when he speaks. "What is your family name, anyways?"

Harry looks at him sharply. "Does it matter?"

"Maybe not," he says with a crooked smile, "Maybe so."

Harry huffs but tells him anyways, "Potter."

Theodore stares at him owlishly for a long minute before letting out a loud guffaw of laughter. Harry can't pretend to know why Theodore finds this so funny so he just waits the other out.

"Wilkes is going to go round the bend when he finds out," Theodore says, still fighting off a stubborn grin.

"Why?"

"Potter is an old family," Theodore says. "Not exactly Pureblood, as they have a tendency to marry muggleborns rather regularly, but old anyways. They're related to many of the old families, too. I think a Black recently married a Potter."

"My mother was muggleborn," Harry says.

"Yeah. Everyone knows."

Harry nods once and strokes his fingers down the side of Bice's flank. He is very large for his age in the species, probably longer than Harry's whole arm from snout to tail. He is silent as Theodore's daemon is so. The red fox is curled around her boy's feet, watching them with avid, yellow eyes. Bice only occasionally returns the gaze.

"I didn't," Harry finally reveals, focused on stroking Bice. "I didn't know until only a few weeks ago."

"What do you mean?"

"I grew up in the muggle world," Harry says, watching Theodore through his shaggy fringe. The other boy is staring at him like he can't believe what Harry is saying. "I didn't know I was a wizard, or that my parents were magical, or anything. I thought they had died in a car crash."

"A car crash!"

"I don't know anything about this world. I've got loads to learn."

Theodore's daemon shifts around his feet, and looks up at her boy.

"You'll learn," Theodore says. "Muggleborns come to Hogwarts every year and they are no further behind than most others. Besides, your Harry bloody Potter."

Harry snorts, already quite disillusioned with his own celebrity.

"This is Muirenn," Theodore says suddenly, introducing the red fox wrapped around his feet. Bice perks up his head from the light doze Harry's petting had put him in to peer at the fox over the side of the bench.

"Bice," he says. "Greetings."

Both Theodore and Muirenn blink in surprise at Bice's boy voice, but they don't comment on it. Their reaction tells Harry that having a daemon of the same gender is as rare in the Wizarding world as it is in the Muggle. That Bice can change gender as often as shape is likely as strange, not that Bice has cared one wit about that for some years now.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Bice," Muirenn says in a feathery, feminine voice. "Shall we be friends?"

"We've never had a friend before," Bice reveals to Harry's mild embarrassment. But Bice is already flowing down the side of the seat and taking on the coppery jackrabbit form again, his good mood restored. Muirenn greets him with a delicate nose-to-nose nuzzle. Harry just shrugs and offers Theodore a tenuous smile.

Harry has always wanted a friend, and who is he to be picky?

ooo

"Has anybody seen a toad? A boy named Neville has lost his."

"No."

"Why does it smell like pumpkins in here?"

"That's a good question."

"Oh! I've read that book! It's absolutely fascinating! Especially the history of the last few decades. I've also read Hogwarts, A History, and the two accounts of the war don't always add up, which does make me wonder which may be accurate. Oh, I do hope that the professors will be able to clear that up for me before we're tested on the subject!"


End file.
